OSCON 2016

About this course

we basically knew nothing about open source when we started and along the way we learned so I wanted to learn some of some of the things sure with some of the

things we learned the first thing we learned is that know is temporary but yes is forever and I think those who raised their hands as before maybe have a sense of this already but basically

whenever you're being asked to add something or make significant design decision and you're not sure then really in doubt you should say no because once you say yes you can never never take

that back and a lot of times you'll rationalize it you'll say oh I'll just add this feature and then later I'll remove it but no you really won't it's gonna stay there forever and haunt you

so in doubt just say no and really that's a rule of software it's not a rule of open-source but the thing with open-source is that you're under a lot of pressure to make those decisions at a

very rapid pace right for us it's about 1,200 times a month and there are pitchforks right because people send patches and then they're really upset sometimes when you don't merge them but

my advice is resist that pressure and maybe I'm maybe I'm saying the obvious here the second thing we learned is that open source is really really great for challengers if you're a small team if

you're doing something if you're let's say punching above your weight in any way open-source is really great because it levels the playing field basically it gives you access to an enormous pool of

expertise at a really large scale so that you can focus on solving whatever problem you're trying to solve and pretend you have this enormous R&D departments to back you up and so that

really allows small teams whether it's a start-up or hobby project to to to really compete with much large organizations which is really a good thing for everybody and the key here is

that is to know what open source can give you what it cannot in this metaphor of david-and-goliath open source is the slingshot right it gives you an additional strength and thrust but you

still got to figure out what to do with it it's not going to magically make you you products great it's not going to magically help you figure out what

problem to solve and and and how to explain to users how to use it but if you have that insight even for the other if you have that specific focus then they will really multiply it and we use

that a lot you